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Sunday, 28 October 2012

Hair of the week

Anyway, this is a frivolous post about lovely hairstyles, of which I have been severely lacking in recent weeks.
I'm growing my hair, and dip-dyeing it, and am totally sick of wearing it down. Hair-down now is for fancy occasions / romantic moments, as there is a 15 month old swinging out of it at every opportunity. It gets in the way of me breastfeeding, being clambered on is a nightmare with loose hair, it's in my way as I do household chores, and it just feels lank and boring down loose.

I came upon the most beautiful blog yesterday, purely by chance.
Up to now I've been following mostly fashion blogs, written by 20-somethings, who all seem to just be walking advertisements for large fashion labels. I'm kind of sick of them because:
a) I can no longer kid myself that I'm a 20-something (see above jowls for proof)
b) I can't afford to buy or fit my ass into their designer wardrobes
c) They're all the same, every blogger is either standing in her back garden wearing Isabel Marant sneakers, or crossing a Manhattan road holding a Starbucks wearing a cocoon coat. (I'm just jealous really)

So, in honour of embracing my full-time status as "home-maker", I found this blog, called A Beautiful Mess, run by two US sisters who have a shop. It has fashion, beauty, decor, recipes, a whole lifestyle that I totally aspire to. I want to own a vintage clothes shop. I want to have perfectly manicured baby blue nails. I want to braid my hair for 15 minutes every morning. I want to bake apples with latticed pastry, like mini apple pies (check them out, they're seriously cool). I've only spent about an hour reading the blog, and am yet to check out the fashion bit, but what I've seen I've fallen in love with.

They do great beauty and hair tutorials, with step-by-step instructions and photos. My above hairstyle was inspired by the one here. They show 4 buns in a row across the back of the head, but my head only fit 3 for some reason, so I put the middle two on top of each other.
It's basically 2 low buns behind the ears, with 2 more in the middle, you could put them at any angles, as long as they're loose and messy they'll look good.

I've been wearing my hair up in a ponytail, which, with my fringe and pink hair I thought looked ok as a "style", and it does to a point. I love the ease of a ponytail, you throw it up in the morning, and it's there all day, and a high enough ponytail with red lips feels retro and Sandra Dee-ish.
Pinned styles like the one above can come loose / get pulled out by a "horsey-horsey" game / impale your head like mine did today until I located the offending bobby pin. But pinned styles look way chic-er, and more effort-y, to use two non-adjectives. I like how my pink hair is still on view, it adds interest to the look, and you could go mad with the flowers and bows, or leave it plain and simple. Because I wanted to keep the style loose and unkempt-looking, I twisted each section of hair, and twisted it into a half-knot, not pulling the ends through. You could pull the ends through for a more casual-looking style. Wow, check out my hairdressing terminology. I'll stop before I come up with any more crap words to describe it.

I needed 2 or 3 pins per bun, so if you have a few hanging around give this a go. It would also add a nice curl to your hair, so you could pin it like this for the day, and have it curly for the evening. Ooh, look at us housewives dolling ourselves up for our husbands getting home from work! I'll have the slippers by the fire next.

No slippers here. He just won't wear them, says they're not rock 'n' roll, which is true. And no fire neither.
Babbling now, it's 2.50am real time, but the clocks have gone back, which in my world justifies another hour of web-surfing.
If you try this style and follow The Mama's Hip on Facebook, please put up a photo of it to show us! Jowls allowed.
Niamh x